About Me

Hi, I’m Alex.

I build communities, started one of the longest running coworking communities in the world, write a crapload of words every day, tweet a little too much, coach people to be the best version of themselves possible, can't stop learning new things, and do my very best not to take myself too seriously.

I have one goal: to fill the world with truly excellent collaborators so we can all work together, better.

Because let's be honest...most of us aren't very good at it.

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philadelphia

In early summer of 2007, Indy Hall wasn’t a place, but it was a nomadic tribe. We were moving from bar to cafe to restaurant to living room – anywhere with wifi – in the pursuit of a better working experience than working alone in our apartments.

At the time, Old City didn’t really jump to mind as the ideal place for us to settle. Compared to other neighborhoods, it was pricey. None of us lived in Old City. And on the weekends…well, the area attracted Philadelphia’s “bridge and tunnel” crowd.

But a few things drew us in.

For one, while none of us lived there, the 2nd Street subway station and the bus routes provided easy access to the neighborhood.

Second, one of the bar/restaurant spots we’d been frequenting was the geek friendly National Mechanics.

And third was the opportunity we found to rent this beautiful loft, and the lovely couple who took a chance letting us rent it to try out our “unorthodox” business model.

We Found Other Nerds on 3rd St

National Mechanics isn’t a geek-friendly spot by accident – it’s actually the “downstairs” of Weblinc, a quiet but powerful leader in the Philadelphia technology community and a supporter of everything from meetups, parties, and happy hours for groups of all sizes and flavors.

Weblinc provides their own enterprise-class eCommerce tools to companies that I’m sure you’ve heard of, and they employ some of the sharpest tech and business crew in Philadelphia. Jason and Darren Hill, the brothers who own National Mechanics and Weblinc, became quick friends and – for me personally – mentors, as they’ve been growing a tech business in Philly since the early 90’s

Just across the street from National/Weblinc, we found I-Site, another Philadelphia veteran web company. Founder Ian Cross doesn’t SOUND like a Philadelphian, since you’ll likely notice his british accent before you get too far into conversation with him, but Ian most certainly bleeds Philadelphia and has a lot of love for nerds of all kinds in this city. In addition to leading a successful creative/tech agency, Ian is active in many arts, culture, and civic circles across Philadelphia, always bringing his a-game.

There were other technology companies in Old City, of course, but these were the first two we found that not only had a critical mass of their own, but went out of their way to welcome and support other tech businesses coming into the neighborhood, and they both happened to be on 3rd street.

Head North, Young Man

We settled into the groove in Old City quickly. The easy access from anywhere in the city was a big attraction, but so was the bountiful lunch spots, the dozens of after-hours drink spots, and the close proximity to historic Philadelphian landmarks like the Liberty Bell and the other Hall of Independence. Our members loved inviting their clients to Old City for meetings for these reasons and more.

It was also really great to be so close to the old city arts community – First Fridays provided endless people watching and opportunities to scope out the galleries latest shows.

When we started looking for a new location to grow into in early 2009, one of our members found a vacant floor in the Daniel Building. We showed the spot to our members and everyone agreed – this new spot north of Market street would bring us a myriad of improvements over our original office, not the least of which were a main street positioning over our Strawberry St “alley” location. The owners – Miles & Generalis, were supportive of what we were doing. They “got it”, and had a similar origin story themselves. M&G partners Tom and Alex are artists themselves, and identified strongly with our goals of bringing people together for creative and business endeavors. I think we brought a familiar identity to their building, and they’ve been supportive the whole way.

We joked that we didn’t think it would have been possible to move closer to National Mechanics, and yet – that’s exactly what we did.

We opened our new North 3rd St location – equidistant north of Market Street from National Mechanics/Weblinc’s building, in May 2009 and continued to grow and fill out our 2nd floor clubhouse.

Colonizing The Daniel Building

Indy Hall’s never been great for teams bigger than 2 or 3 – so when a couple of our members (one of whom lent us money for our move into the Daniel Building) began to quickly grow their company, they jumped on the opportunity to move and have space for their burgeoning team…up one floor in the Daniel Building.

Earlier that same year, Indy Hall friends and supporters Frank Roche and Sarah Chambers were looking to move their team at iFractal across town, and fell in love with an office… in the Daniel Building.

And as of this week, the growing Philadlephia contingent at Wildbit – decided to officially move to…the Daniel Building.

As of this week, Indy Hall & friends account for 36% of the 14 units in the Daniel Building.

Weblinc Expands North

Earlier this year, Weblinc bought and renovated another building on the stretch of 3rd street…right between the Daniel Building and market Street. This is after spending several months in temporary space…you guessed it…from our offices in the Daniel Building.

It doesn’t stop there

Continue north on 3rd street corridor and you’ll run into the Devnuts office, home to the John Fazio, Chris Alfano, and Matt Monahan’s Jarv.us and their unusual tech-talent bootcamp. I’d been watching them closely since they opened Devnuts, and it’s been really fantastic to watch them literally fill their North 3rd Street loft just across the street from Liberty Lands Park with some of the brightest young minds in Philadelphia and whip them into shape. Earlier this year, we joined forces to work on my newest adventure, DynamicWear.

Slash7 – Amy Hoy and Thomas Fuchs’ joint for producing their cheerful webapps like Freckle and Charmrelocated to the neighborhood earlier this year – from Vienna, Austria. They just signed a lease on an office of their own just a couple of blocks away as their team has recently more than doubled in size.

And this is just a sampling of companies that I know well – DrinkPhilly’s office is at 3rd and Chestnut. Agency M and QuirkBooks are around the corner on Church Street. I’m sure I’m leaving somebody out – if we’re N3rd St Neighbors, say hello in the comments!

N3rd Street Only Goes One Way: Up

It was while hanging out with the Jarv.us/Devnuts crew that we realized that N. 3rd Street could easily be read as N3rd Street, the “leet” spelling of nerd.

It’s been really, really great to make N3rd Street our home over the last couple of years, and contribute to the gravity that is attracting more and more tech and creative companies to the neighborhood.

That’s really the difference though – it’s starting to feeling like a neighborhood. I don’t just love the area, I love our neighbors. I love seeing people I know on the street while I’m walking around, saying hello, and finding out what they’re up to.

Even better, though, is that it seems like all of the companies on N3rd Street are growing. It’s a great energy for all of us to be sharing in.

Things are good and only getting better on N3rd Street.

If you’re running a tech/creative company on or near N3rd Street, say hi in the comments! Thinking about moving to the neighborhood? Let me know if you have any questions!

“the long term relationships that lasted was with a network of people – much larger than those in your current company”

This quote comes from a history lesson by Steve Blank about how Silicon Valley came to be what it is.

The important lesson in here is not that by following these rules you can become a replica of the Silicon Valley, though I fear that many will cargo-cult their way in that direction.

The lesson is that Silicon Valley wasn’t always Silicon Valley, and it didn’t become Silicon Valley by mimicing other cities. It became that way by focusing on a culture of long-term relationships. Not the fast and dirty “what can you do for me?”, but the kind that – as Steve categorizes it, acts with an understanding of what it means to “Pay it Forward”.

I’ve spoken with [person’s name removed] at length about what can be done for early stage companies. One thing he and I tend to disagree on is the definition of a “growth” company. Most people read “growth” and punctuate it with “exit”. I don’t want that for Philadelphia, and I think that’s one of our biggest opportunities to differentiate. I’d be curious to hear how that differentiation factors into your strategy, if at all.

Here’s what I’d like to see: Philly-loyal companies grow, hire, grow and nurture talent. Talent spins off, creates next Philly-loyal company. Grows that, hires, nurtures talent. Repeat. Reinvest. Repeat. Reinvest. This addresses retention and hiring concerns. It also creates a rich culture of people who know how to start and grow companies in Philly.

I’ll put $100 of my own money today on [company name removed] being a part of this evolution in a big way. But they can’t know it we expect it of them. They just need to keep doing what they’re doing, and it’ll happen. I’m sure of it. $100 sure of it.

My personal goal? I want that pattern to be known as a “Philadelphia Exit” and be something that other cities strive to recreate.

PSL has an identity crisis, and fragmentation is inevitable.

It feels familiar, though, and isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Rather than try to identify the various identities in play, which I guarantee would offend somebody, I’m thinking more about the inevitable results and what they mean for this organization as well as Philadelphia.

In that post, I pointed to two distinct events: a conference, which had grown by orders of magnitude and largely lost a discernible identity – becoming a destination for designers, developers, marketers, social media types, VCs, startups…anybody on the web, essentially. Then there’s the festival – the gathering of humans, resembling a spring break, where it didn’t MATTER what industry we affiliated with. We enjoyed our each others’ company and celebrated the fact that we worked on the web. Last year, I left the conference behind and instead spent more time seeking the festival – the people of SXSW – and focusing on quality time with them.

I think PSL is suffering a similar fate. It boasts a 1000+ member listserv. Most of those members don’t know why they are there, or why anybody else is there. PSL has evolved from a community of practice into a community of interest. Most of the real leaders are people are on the fringe of PSL, only a few are still active in the heart. Most new members of PSL, like new SXSW attendees, don’t know to look to the fringe for the people – most specifically the mentors – that they really seek. They never make it past the talking heads, or know that they’re supposed to.

SXSW struggled culturally for a few years by trying to hold on too tightly to things they didn’t know how to control, and in some cases, couldn’t control if they wanted to. PSL has done the same. In both cases, fragmentation became inevitable.

The way each chooses to deal with fragmentation is the difference between success and failure.

For me, the question is: do you continue to MAKE the fragmentation it happen, creating chaos and damage within the ecosystem along the way? Or do you LET it happen, understanding the stress fractures and working to make any losses sustainable?

With fragmentation, comes a renewal of focus. Focus that PSL seems to want and need.

On Mentorship

I was on the PSL advisory board back in the summer of 2009. On an advisory call, I made it clear what I thought should be PSL’s primary mission: to help create the currently missing “senior generation” of hi-tech business leaders that our city is missing, so that it might be available for the next generation. The focus on mentorship seems to have come up in last night’s fishbowl too, but with the wrong focus. The focus was on incentivizing mentors. Or worse, trying to force mentorship from PSL members.

Being a mentor isn’t necessarily the active state of “mentoring” that incubators, accelerators, and the startup tabloids would have you think. Mentoring is rooted in the act of leading by example. People who coach without doing the things that they coach are just that – coaches – but they aren’t mentors.

Chris Bartlett has an amazing take on this. He encourages “secret mentorship”. It’s a humbler approach to mentorship. It happens two ways:

You can pick somebody to mentor, but don’t tell them you are mentoring them. This challenges you to show them how to do things rather than just tell them. It pushes you to guide them without forcing them.

You can pick somebody to be your mentor, but don’t tell them that they are mentoring you. This challenges you to synthesize from their actions. It forces you to learn instead of just replicate.

If PSL wants to get serious about being an engine to create and encourage mentorship in Philadelphia, I think it’s going to need to figure out a way to dodge the ego-driven “leaders” that the process is inevitably going to attract and instead, be laser-focused on helping create opportunities for acts of secret mentorship.

I don’t know if that’s the Philly Startup Leaders that the “leaders” decide to rebuild, but that’s the Philly Startup Leaders that Philly needs.

Then again, if they don’t build that, I’m not worried. Others have already started down that path in their place.

I was a bit anxious prior to the release of this article, since I know I tend to be one of the few dissenting voices about “startups”, in Philly and in general. In the simplest of terms, I’m turned off by the common sense of privilege and entitlement in the media’s version of tech/startup communities, but worse, that people in those communities actually live like it’s true. I find it toxic, and don’t want anything to do with things that perpetuate that in Philadelphia. We deserve better.

To the contrary – I was quite pleased that this article was missing that tone, almost entirely. I enjoy the fact that it was headlined by a photo of four primary voices in the article who, while we have varied perspectives, are sitting around a table in the Indy Hall kitchen, smiling. The article reads with the honesty of a reality check without being too “up” or too “down”. My takeaway is, “things are changing, for the better, and ‘more of the same’ isn’t going to work anymore.”

That’s an attitude I can get behind.

Photo by Jeff Fusco

I also appreciated the strong overtones of “lets be a better Philly” instead of the usual “let’s be more like city X” that the media usually picks up on. In the Flying Kite piece, comparisons to other cities are limited to the fact that the growing pains Philly’s startup ecosystem are going to AREN’T unique to Philly – a fact which I believe to be completely true.

I believe that will be one of Philly’s biggest advantages over time, the thing that will help us outlast other cities: it’s ability to be itself, instead of trying to live up to being a competitor to Silicon Valley.

Some choice quotes:

“I think our identity should happen organically.” – Brad Oyler

“You need to have people at a common level that are comfortable with each other,” says McNeal of Startup Therapy, noting that as the area’s startup community has evolved, the need for more than basic happy-hour networking and base startup knowledge is evident.

Todd is talking about the need for Communities of Practice, rather than simply Communities of Interest. I expounded on this in Brian Glick’s recent blog post about Startup Therapy, with hopes of keeping them on the track to becoming a strong community of practice.

RJ Metrics, Cera says, is almost a “model citizen” in the local startup community.

I couldn’t agree more. The guys at RJ Metrics are sharp, motivated, and chose to be in Philly – moving into the city from Camden earlier this year. Among my favorite traits they exhibit that most other startups can’t seem to get – they’re quiet, except for when they have something meaningful to say.

RJ Metrics the kind of leading by example I want to see more of in the city I choose to call home. I’d take 100 more “RJ Metrics” type companies over a single “exit strategy” company making headlines anywhere in the nation.

Cera already has an idea for the startup community he is leading. “The best thing you can do is totally kick ass here.”

This is why I love Chris as a leader. He’s often reluctant, but he knows what he wants for the community he’s a part of.

I had a number of citations of my own quoted in the article, so I thought I’d share the Q&A I did over email with Petrucci for context and reference. Joe’s questions are in bold, my answers follow:

Q. What word(s) or phrase(s) would you use to describe Philly’s startup community?

I suppose that depends on which startup community you’re talking about. There isn’t just one.

There’s at least two styles of startup communities evolving in Philadelphia:

One version is a hyper connected community of interest, full of people who are passionate about the idea of startups but don’t have a lot of practical experience. They’re quick with rhetoric, read TechCrunch every day, and cheer whenever their “favorite startup” gets funded or acquired. I think this is more “scene” than “community”. This is endemic of most “startup” cultures you’ll find in cities across america, though. We’ve got one too, but that doesn’t make us special.

Another version is much smaller than the first. It’s populated by people who are in the early stages of building a business. That group is full of people sharing what they learn as they learn. They’re sharing practical experiences, problems and solutions. They recognize that Philly’s biggest missing asset isn’t funding, or talent, but a lack of mentors. They’re building communities of practice around early stage web-business creation to fill in that gap. If they’re lucky, they’ll become the future generation that Philly doesn’t have today, but that’s going to take some time. If this group pulls this off in a way that can last more than one generation, we’ll had a unique and valuable resource in our city.

At least one more version is much larger than the other two communities combined; mostly by nature of the fact that while it’s not self-aware enough to be a “community” by most measures, there’s an ecosystem of people starting new businesses in Philadelphia. They’re driven by pure entrepreneurship, the kind that doesn’t know any other option. These people are the most exciting to me because they’re both kinetic and potential energy. These people are building businesses because they want to, they need to, and they’ve either explicitly chosen to do it in Philly or they can’t think of a good reason to leave. They’re already in motion, not waiting for anybody. But there’s still potential energy because they haven’t yet realized that they aren’t alone.

Q. Do you still feel as strongly — like in your early July blog post “The funding ecosystem in Philadelphia: The empty can rattles the loudest” — that incentivizing startups coming/staying in Philly is not a good idea?

Its not so much that I think it’s a bad idea, it’s that I think we deserve better than the kinds of people/companies this attracts.

Q. What traits/practices have you found among Philly’s most successful bootstrappers?

“Philly”, as a brand or an attitude, is a part of why/how they do what they do

View constraints as benefits, not weaknesses

Honest/authentic expectations of themselves and others

They are unwilling to settle for status quo

They have strong mentors. They have at least one local mentor

They are involved in more than just the industry they are bootstrapping. Civic engagement, arts involvement, some creative endeavor.

They’re willing to let go of things, or transition them to new leadership.

Q. What supports are needed for those businesses and organizations in Philly that have already “proven their will to live against the odds … without begging”? Who should provide them?

My stock answer has always been: stay the fuck out of their way. I still think that’s the best answer.

The second best answer is to ask them. And don’t take their first answer as their only answer.

Q. How is what you’re working on contributing to the growth and/or potential of the Philadelphia-based startup community?

I think we’ve gotten to a point where we’re a both a place and a group of people that people can find comfort and support in trying to accomplish things on their own. We’ve never been a “services” business, we’re more like a community of practitioners where:

You can learn about things you didn’t even know were possible.

You can discover interests and skills you never knew you had.

You can rest assured that you’re not alone, and there’s always somebody who’s done the thing you’re about to do. All you have to do is ask for help.

You can be honest with yourself and the people around you.

The biggest thing for me, very personally, and I’m 100% certain that has led many people down a path of blazing their own trail is the comfort in knowing that you’re not alone in the way you think, the way you want to act, the things you want to do. Simply knowing that good, honest, hardworking people like you are doing this thing every day is inspiration enough for many people to leap into their own great unknown potential.

The night before the 4 year anniversary party, Johnny mentioned something about plans for a photobooth at the event. With some hard work from Chris Dawson, Susan Harner, Sean Martorana, Johnny Bilotta, Steve Kradel, we ended up with this most excellent photo-set capturing the night.

Special thanks to Frankford Hall for loving this idea as much as us and letting us take over. Extra special thanks to ALL of our sponsors who made sure that we had plenty – and I do mean plenty – of liquid courage to get people in front of the camera.

If I had to pick the lead-in to be used on every piece of press I get from today until the day I die, it’d be the lead-in that Chris Wink wrote for my Q&A on this past Friday’s edition of Technically Philly.

Alex Hillman partied last night.

TP‘s been keeping track of my antics for their entire lifespan. Geoff has said, “Technically Philly is our Rolling Stone” and I couldn’t agree more. Fact is, I’m beyond thankful for ALL of the press that’s helped tell my stories over my entire career. But TechnicallyPhilly’s coverage continues to be the most meaningful coverage to me.

People in Indy Hall have stepped up into roles in Indy Hall and elsewhere. What’s interesting about creating a place where the services are not the core function is that it’s a blank canvas to do whatever you want to make of it. That creates a self-selecting group of people who aren’t going to wait for other people. It’s a pretty powerful engine.

I haven’t been counting lineage, but we’re finding leaders training and mentoring new leaders…. All these people who were coming together or getting closer four years ago are still here making Philadelphia a better place.

We’re still doing it our way. The DIY way and we have the ‘just get it done attitude.’ I’m proud of it.

You talked about Philadelphia needing to outpace other cities, when really, I want Philadelphia to out-last other cities.

As communities scale, fragmentation is not a bad thing.

Indy Hall, in four years, will touch more people’s lives. I don’t know what that means yet.

Philadelphia will always be home, but I know my future will involve being somewhere else for some time.

I have fallen in love with Philadelphia. I didn’t love it four years ago. I liked it enough to give it a shot, but now I genuinely love being here.

“Hi Alex! My name is Jane Von Bergen and I write about workplace for the Philadelphia Inquirer. We heard you’re doing something down in old city and it sounds very interesting. I’d like to come by with a photographer and talk to you about it. Can we stop by tomorrow?”

Shit. We had better go buy some furniture.

This was Monday, August 13th of 2007.

I’d just gotten back from my 4 year anniversary vacation with my girlfriend and some friends from college. But it was also the first weekday after we’d signed the lease on the office that was about to become the clubhouse for Independents Hall.

We had 18 days to transform an empty space into our home.

And the Inquirer wanted to talk to us before we even had any fucking desks.

So yeah. We were on the front page of the business section of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

My face looked a bit more like this.

Jane wrote “By Wednesday, they were showing up for work”. The fact was, we’d been there working feverishly for 48 hours to get the space in shape for our first emergency visit from a journo and a photog.

The group effort paid off. By Wednesday, we could work. Really though, we’d been working together for months. We just had a new place to call home. We had almost 2 dozen members signed up already, but we didn’t start counting memberships until September 1st while we weren’t 100% sure who our internet service provider was going to be. “Come by and work for free until our grand opening on September 1st!”, we said.

This was Wednesday, August 22nd of 2007.

If you did plan to work this week, you’d better plan to be near to a power outlet. A few days later, boxes showed up. My friend Jory worked at Belkin, and had coordinated a drop shipment of the most essential coworking space utility besides coffee cups: power strips.

This was Friday, August 31st of 2007.

3 weeks had passed.

I’d been up for 20 hours a day. I was basically a scarecrow except instead of being stuffed with bugs and straw, I was being propped up by gallons of coffee, a carton of cigarettes, and beer.

Indy Hall had people in it every day. Some mornings it was just me and Bart until noon. Other days we had a person parked at every desk before lunchtime. It was completely surreal. The only thing keeping me going was knowing that the people I’d been wanting to be around were at Indy Hall, ready to cowork with me.

Today, though, was the last day of “free coworking” for Indy Hall. On September 1st, the giant Dr. Frankenstein switch on our memberships flipped to “on”.

This was Saturday, September 1st of 2007.

Independents Hall was open for business. Of course, in true “independent” fashion, it was a Saturday.

Good thing, too. Because we had a party to throw. We got to transform this:

Into this:

That went pretty well.

Today is Thursday, September 1st of 2011.

Turns out those first 3 weeks were just practice.

Together, we’ve spent 4 years transforming our surroundings, 4 years of finding the best things in our worlds and coaxing them even closer to greatness.

Sometimes I “get serious”, and I find that those are the times when I lose sight of what I really care about.

Anyway, you say you want to become better. I mean that’s really all you need.

_why points out to this aspiring programmer that all he needs to get better is to never lose the desire to get better. Everything else is experimentation to figure out how to get yourself there.

When I was speaking to a Drexel Alum group earlier this year, somebody asked me “why I chose to be an entrepreneur”. Frankly I’m not sure it’s something I chose, but my answer was off the cuff and still pretty accurate.

Every major decision in my life has been fueled by my unwavering intolerance of the status quo, for the static, and for the unchanging. I don’t just want me to get better, I want to be surrounded by things that are getting better all the time.
My motivation to make everything around me better, even just a little bit better, and never forgetting that as my primary motivation – I’ve gotten better myself, even just a little bit better, as a result.

Posts like these give me hope that Philadelphia’s startup community has a chance to be something special.

The Jack White School of Business

I’m noticing that the guys behind the blog that covers the Philly Startup Scene tend to have a better grasp on business fundamentals than some of the “startups” included in their coverage. I’m guessing it’s a blend of their own savvy, the fact that they’re learning from the successes and failures of industry they’re covering, or some combination of the two.

Blanda focuses on the value of constraints as creative fuel, the importance of taking ownership of your work, and a focus on simplicity. The whole piece is a a worthwhile read, and is peppered with White Stripes videos for extra taste.

Startup Therapy Talks Trust

A new group of Indy Hall members have been self-organizing for the last few weeks for a self-titled meetup dubbed “Startup Therapy”. I’m excited to see what sort of antidote this group is able to provide for curing some of the most troubling issues I (and many others) have with Philly’s startup culture.

One of the members, Brian Glick, penned a brief post inspired by a conversation the group shared at last week’s meeting regarding selling into big companies. He mentions an article with some things to consider when selling to the BigCos. But I smiled as I read the next part:

One thing that this article overlooks (or maybe assumes) is that you need to build personal relationships based on openness and trust. Big companies are made up of real people.

If you’ve been following along here, I’ve been writing a lot about the importance of trust (1, 2, 3).

Startup trends come and go, but the causes and effects of trust in business are age-old. I don’t think the article assumes anything, I think that on the whole people forget the significant impact of this simple priority. Brian’s attitude towards building trust and authentic relationships is one I wish more people made a part of their public dialogue.

Disruption, the good kind, is that experience that makes you turn your head, question where you are, why you’re seeing or doing what you’re doing. There’s usually an element of curiosity to it. In the best cases, there’s an element of participation.